The Networked Classroom
What’s interesting this week:
Blogging Wikis Microblogging
Reflection and Collaboration Blogs, wikis and Microblogging If students learn to connect with others appropriately and effectively online anything is possible.
Module 5
The Tools: This module looks at the social networking tools specifically for collaboration and reflection. Each of the major Tools – Blogs – Wikis – Twitter are mentioned and summarised this week. There are lots more resources on the internet that give you information with suggestions for using collaborative online tools in the classroom and for professional learning. I have included some for you to start with in the Edmodo module folder. This newsletter looks at the main tools, how they can be used in professional learning and ideas for using them with students.
Some videos to watch: Will Richardson TEDxNYED watch?v=Ni75vIE4vdk
Inside this issue: Blogs
2
Wikis
3
Microblogging 4 Twitter for teachers
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Twitter in the classroom
5
http://www.youtube.com/
A parent of two middle school-aged children, Will Richardson has been blogging about the intersection of social online learning networks and education for the past 10 years at Weblogg-ed.com. He is a former public school educator for 22 years, and is a co-founder of Powerful Learning Practice, a unique long-term, jobembedded professional development program that has mentored over 3,500 teachers worldwide in the last four years. Heidi Hayes Jacobs TEDxNYED http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsUgj9_ltN8
As Executive Director of the Curriculum Mapping Institute and President of Curriculum Designers, Inc., Dr. Jacobs is an internationally recognized expert in the fields of curriculum and instruction. She has served as an education consultant to schools nationally and internationally on issues and practices pertaining to: curriculum mapping, dynamic instruction, and 21st century strategic planning. Donald Clarke http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=dEJ_ATgrnnY 10 yrs pedagogical change.
Search, links, media sharing, social media, Wikipedia, games, open source etc. are ground breaking shifts in the way we learn, says Donald Clark. Unfortunately, they're not matched by the way we teach. The growing gap between teaching practice and learning practice is acute and growing. Institutional teaching, espe-
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Reflection and Collaboration
Blogging View the Prezi, it is a short introduction to blogs – the what, how and why. What is a blog? Watch the Youtube it is a short rundown on blogging. This is a good resource to use with students. Blogging for professional learning: Why blog: We blog as professionals for sharing / reflecting / collaborating Student Blogging: Student blogging is great as a process journal or reflection. Students can also blog about a passion or interest. When students learn to blog they need to: 1) Learn what a blog is (many don't really know) 2) Learn how to respectfully leave intelligent comments on others' blogs 3) Learn how to customize their blog and make it their own. 4) Learn how to create an intelligent post. 5) Respond to others' comments on their blog.
Watch Silvia Tolisano’s Slideshare about Student Blogging. – find a quote from her you particularly like from the slideshow to share with the group on our Edmodo page.
Suggested Blogging platforms
21 classes
https://www.21classes.com/
Edublogs Kid Blog
http://edublogs.org http://kidblog.org/home/
Tumblr
http://www.tumblr.com/
Kidblog
http://kidblog.org/home/
Resources: The prezi: http://prezi.com/2siidk8-uw45/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy Blogging youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwcW5AKcfl4&feature=youtu.be Silvia Tolosano’s Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/langwitches/learning-to-blog-for-your-
students
Wikis Module
5
A wiki is a collaborative space which allows people to add, modify, or delete content online. It is a simple format that from a blog or most other collaborative platforms in that the content is created without any defined owner or leader. Wikis have little structure, allowing structure to be created according to the needs of the users. Unlimited numbers of pages can be added and grouped according to need. Wikis allow for multimedia uploads including video and images. Perhaps the most well-known wiki is Wikipedia: is a collaboratively edited, multilingual, free internet encyclopedia that is not for profit. Volunteers worldwide collaboratively write Wikipedia's 30 million articles in 287 languages, including over 4.5 million in the English version. Anyone who can access the site can edit almost any of its articles. It is the largest and most popular general reference work in the world. In February 2014, The New York Times reported that Wikipedia is ranked fifth globally among all websites stating, "With 18 billion page views and nearly 500 million unique visitors a month..., Wikipedia trails just Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft and Google, the largest with 1.2 billion unique visitors”
Wikis for teachers and students Wikis for professional learning: There are plenty of examples of wikis that have been set up for professional learning and collaboration. They are useful to create for staff sharing and planning across a school, faculty etc or for special projects. Wikis for students: Teachers can set up wikis for students – which can include an entire class or wikis can be created for smaller groups. If the teacher is a ‘member’ of the wiki they have the ability to monitor what is being uploaded and shared. Wikispaces is probably the most accessible platform - Students have access to wikispaces only via parent email or teacher set up. http://www.wikispaces.com/content/teacher
An excellent wiki example as professional sharing space. https://isb21.wikispaces.com/ from Bangkok International School.
An introduction to wikis can be viewed on the Youtube from Commoncraft http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY
When to use a wiki: Read this article from Edutopia. It gives some great examples of wikis for the classroom: Teachers guide to the use of Wikis in the classroom.
From: http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2012/07/teachers-guide -on-use-of-wikis-in.html
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Microblogging
What is microblogging?
The Networked Classroom
Sunny South ssoputh12@gmail.com
According to Wikipedia : Microblogging is a broadcast medium that exists in the form of blogging. A microblog differs from a traditional blog in that its content is typically smaller in both actual and aggregated file size. Microblogs "allow users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links". These small messages are sometimes called microposts. As with traditional blogging, microbloggers post about topics ranging from the simple, such as "what I'm doing right now," to the thematic, such as "sports cars." Commercial microblogs also exist to promote websites, services and products, and to promote collaboration within an organization. Some microblogging services offer features such as privacy settings, which allow users to control who can read their microblogs, or alternative ways of publishing entries besides the web-based interface. These may include text messaging, instant messaging, email, digital audio or
Links:
Module 5
Twitter in our classroom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfbKwpsH9RA http://www.edudemic.com/guides/guide-to-twitter/ 50 ways to use twitter in the classroom http://www.teachhub.com/50-waysuse-twitter-classroom Watch this Youtube for some more tips: http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=K8n31qVxSyg
Microblogging for Professional Learning: Why use twitter for PL? Extends your professional learning network – to outside your physical space Ability to explore a global network Connect virtually with other educators – anytime / anywhere Can be a conference backchannel Contribute to or follow educational hashtags / meetups (a meetup is a designated time each week where teachers use Twitter to converse on a topic) How to begin. Set up an account to use purely as a professional account Start by following, reading and searching for hashtags that reflect your interests Find good people and then check out who they follow Notice the anatomy of a tweet (see ‘Anatomy of a Tweet’) – follow links and hashtags #edchat is a great place to start
Twitter in the Classroom
Microblogging for students Microblogging (particularly Twitter) is a useful platform for classroom discussion, reflection and sharing. Students can use all the same standards as any twitter users – Group discussions using hashtags, include particular people in discussions by using the @ symbol, have students follow people both within their classroom environment and outside it. Setting up a class twitter: You might want to start a new account for your class – this will help corral your students into a group. Follow these steps to achieve a neat solution:
Set up an account (under your class name)
Have students begin an account and they ‘follow’ the class account / and
Have this new account “Follow” your professional account (don’t worry about maintaining 2 accounts – its easy to have two accounts running on a mobile device) your account.
Students can then follow a selection (or all) of the other students in the class.
Optional – students can follow people outside the class – these might be authors, news outlets, NASA or other institutions, scientists etc.
There are a couple of great examples where classes relive historical events via twitter. One project as writing on twitter—the other as following. Take a look on twitter at #tweetingpompeii – students took on a Roman persona each (with a new account) and tweeted in the 1st person about the volcanic eruption, linking to resources on the web about Pompeii and putting up images. This was a great immersive activity that really showcases the power of Twitter and brought the time and the place to life for students. Check it out. You might also like to look at a scholarly twitter project @realtimewwII. @RealTimeWWII is a twitter feed describing the events of World War 11, created by British historian and Oxford graduate Alwyn Collinson. Collinson began the feed in late August 2011, to coincide with the start of WW2 with the German invasion of Poland in September 1939. He has tweeted the events of the war as they happened on each date and time exactly 72 years earlier. The feed has over 300,000 followers and has received worldwide media attention. Collinson has described his project as a method of helping people understand history in real terms, not just statistics, once stating it's about "turning numbers back into people.” He has given lectures and interviews on the project, along with others doing similar projects of other historical events. Collinson has committed to finishing the project, which would take until at least August 2017.
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How could you use Twitter in the classroom?